Meaning of CHANNEL in English

Etymology: Middle English chanel, from Old French, from Latin canalis pipe, channel — more at canal

1.

a. : the hollow bed where a natural body or stream of water runs or may run

b. : the deeper part of a moving body of water (as a river, harbor, or strait) where the main current flows or which affords the best passage

c. : a strait or narrow sea between two close land masses

the English Channel

the Mozambique Channel

d. : a means or instrumentality aiding communication or expression or commercial exchange

alongside the familiar press, radio, and film media … other channels have multiplied — E.D.Canham

e. channels plural : a fixed, accustomed, or official course of communication or transmission of information or of commercial interchange

submitting material to the Defense Department without going through prescribed … Army channels — New York Times

f. : a person through whom information is transmitted

he … appears to have been one of Beckford's channels for communication with Courtenay — Times Literary Supplement

g. : a way, course, or direction of thought or action

the accident which directed my curiosity originally into this channel — Charles Lamb

specifically : a restricted path of movement (as of traffic directed between islands at an intersection)

h. : river 4

i. : a band of frequencies of sufficient width for a single radio or television communication being as little as a few cycles per second wide for telegraphy or as great as several megacycles wide for television

j. : the mechanism providing a single path in multiple-path systems for simultaneously and separately recording or transmitting sounds from more than one source ; also : the complete system from microphone to recorder in single-path systems

2.

a. : an especially tubular enclosed passage : conduit , pipe , duct

the poison channel in a snake's fangs

b. : any of the chambers holding identical matrices in a circulating-matrix typesetting machine

3. : a long gutter, groove, or furrow: as

a. : a street or road gutter

b. : canal 4

c. : a flute in a column

d. : a groove cut along the line where rock is to be split

e. : a slanting groove cut around the edge of an outsole of a shoe on the grain surface for imbedding stitches ; also : one of two parallel grooves cut around the edge of an insole on the flesh surface forming a ridge to which the welt is sewed

c. : to lower (an automobile body) by rebuilding with channels which fit around the frame rails — compare chop I vt 4

2. : to traverse by or as if by channels

moors channeled by pastoral valleys

3.

a. : to send or convey through or as if through a channel

channel materials and labor into housing

specifically : to direct through or into a fixed or official course

b. : to direct (feelings or human drives) into particular channels of behavior or action

channel the aggressive impulses of adolescents into sports activity

4. : to confine in or as if in a channel

troops channeled in a narrow road with blocks at either end

5. : to shape or stamp (as a metal strip) into a form having a U-shaped section

intransitive verb

1. : to move in or as if in a channel

the molten metal channels into a belt of troughs

2. : to have a channel cut in

gear lubricants may congeal and channel in cold weather

III. noun

( -s )

Etymology: alteration of chainwale

: one of the flat ledges of heavy plank or metal to which the chain plates are fastened and which are bolted edgewise to the outside of a ship, serving to increase the spread of the shrouds and carry them clear of the bulwarks

IV. adjective

Etymology: channel (I)

: channeled

channel molding

V. noun

1. : a path along which information passes or an area (as of magnetic tape) on which it is stored

2. : a transition passage in jazz : bridge

3. : gutter 2f

4. : one who conveys thoughts or energy from a source believed to be outside one's body or conscious mind ; specifically : one who speaks for a nonphysical being (as while in a trance) — compare medium 7 in the Dict

5. : a passage created in a selectively permeable membrane by a conformational change in membrane proteins

an inflow of sodium ions through the cell's sodium channels

— see calcium channel blocker herein

VI. transitive verb

: to serve as a channel or intermediary for

gets $15 … for channeling the archangel Gabriel — Otto Friedrich

• channeler noun

Webster's New International English Dictionary.Новый международный словарь английского языка Webster.2012